


hospital hymns

by moltenvintagelacedress



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Break Up, Falling Out of Love, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Post-Break Up, Terminal Illnesses, Unrequited Love, YA
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 13:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19210123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moltenvintagelacedress/pseuds/moltenvintagelacedress
Summary: to whom it may concern; a friend, a (ex) lover, a sadist. a series of letters from a man stuck on his simultaneous death and life.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> something i started writing one night. dont have a clear idea of how itll end, but enjoy some introspection from a place of secondhand grief.
> 
> a playlist, for you; it will be updated with the story: https://open.spotify.com/user/jazekaze/playlist/6ytnbDBTz2Gyez8axevMew?si=Nvx2917NTRKvEs7yKPjcIA

_22 june 2019_

johnny seo,

we’re all destined to die. despite this, we weren’t _born_ to die.

all of us have a final day marked on a calendar we will (probably) never see, but we weren’t created just to anticipate it. like somebody once said, we don’t read books just to skip to the final chapter; we read for the climaxes, for the build-ups, for every single tragedy and euphoric moment that we are given. and at the end, when we’re finished and complete and left with whatever feeling that story gave us, we can either choose to move on from it or do something with that feeling.

most people i've met choose to let it fester. they allow that feeling to not take control but to cloud, to take every moment and sour it to just the right degree; they allow it to make every potential action as a result of the one ending, or to not make any potential action into an action in motion. grief isn't a dictator or a plague; it's a sneak thief, creeping in and stealing any and eventually everything we need so swiftly we never realize it until we can no longer fix it.

i'm dying, but i wasn't _born_ to die.

you were always telling me that i was a too-bright match; i would burn fast, but not for very long. we both would laugh because in a way, it was true. i was always doing too many things at once, or helping too many people at once. and i never did learn how to manage it (i like to think nobody ever completely fixes their flaws) but perhaps i have grown used to it. i'd like to think that i've learned what makes me flicker, the things that i get stuck on. and perhaps i have learned what to do with this _feeling_ , this ubiquitous, suffocating sense of knowing. i am dying, and i want to know how to move on from this story.

but perhaps i have learned nothing at all.

ten


	2. 2

_ 25 june 2019 _

johnny seo,

i always wondered if you ever moved on from us. not in the grand sense of it, because that goes without saying; more like the small things. like i still think of you when i hear  _ that _ song, or when i go to put creamer in my coffee because even though i  _ always _ finish it before its expiry date i always think of that time you put expired creamer in my coffee. or how when i wake up in the middle of the night after drinking a bit too much i always without fail expect to see you sitting at the kitchen island drinking coffee and reading something on your phone. love has a way of romanticizing itself even when the love is bitter and poisonous.

i did date for a while after we broke up. there was taeyong, who lasted for two months before he got a new job opportunity and we both realized there wasn't any true love between is. then there was taeil, for a time, who was an absolute gentleman but there was always something  _ lacking _ ; too-long pauses between conversations and stitled and sideways laughs and compliments. i stopped when i decided i was too old for it and quite frankly was too tired to try to replace you.

do you blame me? or are you okay now. i don't think i blame anyone anymore. i was always trying to just accept it, because that's what you're supposed to do. but have you accepted something if there is still emotion behind it? or is it acceptance once you have no form of feeling towards the situation? in any case, i've learned that whether i've accepted it or not, you will still haunt me. but i don't really mind.

ten


	3. 3

_ 29 june 2019 _

johnny seo,

when do you start being considered "dying" instead of living?

i was reading a book yesterday and it came to me because the main character was in the hospital after a fatal car accident and his doctors considered him dying. his love interest, though, refused to believe it; whether because he was in shock or not, he did not consider him dying because he was still  _ there _ . are we dying when we can no longer feel? or like...reciprocate emotion? because what makes us  _ alive _ ?

oh my god, i sound so fucking pretentious right now, i swear thats not my intention. but seriously, what's the cutoff date for being alive?

for me, i think it's when somebody were to stop being able to enjoy life the way they used to. because i don't think you're alive if you don't have something you would fight for; the minute you stop believing in that something, that's when you're dying. so if we use that as our rubric, then i'm not dying. i am in love with my dancing, with my singing; i am living for those i inspire and those i help. i am irrevocably in love with my own life and i hope that counts for something.

hi, im ten. i'm not dead, and i guess i'm not dying yet.


	4. 4

_ 2 july 2019 _

johnny seo,

for some reason i feel obligated to start these letters with a big grand statement, or some sort of question. i don't know if you mind that or not--these letters having a purpose, that is. i like to think though that there's a reason i'm writing to you.

you know i don't particularly like writing for the sake of it. i mean for fucks sake it took us  _ how _ long to sit down and start writing lyrics for our music? i have to have this  _ urge _ to write, like a force that won't leave, an anxiousness in my stomach that grows and grows until i release it. it's weird and inconvenient, but i do think the best writing happens when it pours out; not when it's shaken.

i remember that you were always writing though. it's like that force never left you. everything had double meanings, for every word you wrote down you could come up with three metaphors and then two more metaphors that contradicted it. that's something i always loved seeing--to see someone born to create so passionate, so in love with everything they create, that's a beauty that can't be replicated.

i miss when you would call me when we first started talking, when you wanted someone to go over your work. you'd send me the link and for  _ hours _ we would go over it again and again. i still think it's hilarious you got more pissed when i corrected your grammar than the structure of the work. you were always so open to reworking and rewriting no matter how long it took and i  _ know _ it hurt sometimes and i do know you ignored some critiques, but there wasn't ever a block between us. you respected me so much.

that's something i miss most. we were always so intune, so harmonic in our way of thinking; we were always in sync in strange ways. i know i said i don't believe in true love, or soulmates, and i really don't in the forever-sense. but i think we were, in some way or another. and i don't think i'll find that again.

ten


	5. 5

_ 10 july 2019 _

johnny seo,

i don't know if you particularly care if i write often enough or at all, but i'm sorry for missing the past week or so. yuta's husband sicheng got into a bad accident and i had to be there for him. you remember sicheng, right? he was the one that accidentally broke our one lamp when he and yuta first came over. he's okay now and he'll make a full recovery, but i think yuta kinda. broke.

i think we all forget how close death is to us. i mean i can't talk i'm like months away from dying, but yuta hasn't ever lost someone. he's never had to go through any form of grief, whether it be the kind where you have had months of time to think and contemplate and say goodbye, or a sudden switch-flip sort of death. grief is something he's heard about but avoided because of the stories it came with.

now though, i think he knows. he cried when sicheng got the okay from the doctor and when i left them yesterday they were whispering to each other about something and holding hands. yuta's the kind of person to use the feeling of death to create something, and whatever happens soon i hope he can create something larger than himself.

i think that's all. i've been doing some thinking too the past few days. i think i'll talk to you about it eventually.

ten


	6. 6

_ 12 july 2019 _

johnny seo,

i think i’m about ready to release a new album! i’ve been working for a couple years on it now, finally think it’s ready to release. my label’s excited--wait, did you know i got a label? i did, their niche is indie artists and shit. they’re really great, actually.

the first song on the album is completely instrumental, no synths, no electronic shit i usually do. it’s called petrichor, it’s really, really pretty. it is kind of a pretentious title but it was fun to play with; it means that smell after it rains, you know, and that smell always kinda reminds me back when i first moved to america and it rained every fucking day in seattle. it is simultaneously nostalgic and unfamiliar all at the same time, a contradiction within itself.

anyways, there’s rain sounds in the background and the people i worked with to get the sounds just write with the piano always understood what i meant even when i was being really vague. i did the piano on the track, and i’m so fucking excited for when i’ll get to play it live. i don’t really know if it will be a major success, but regardless i’m very content with it.

i’ve been meaning to make a decision about whether i’ll come forward about the whole dying thing. on the one hand, it’s so fucking me to pull a freddie mercury and not tell anyone, but i also feel some sort of obligation. i was always telling you we didn’t owe anything to the fans, but i think i lied. we don’t really owe them answers or explanations to us, to our lyrics and our music, because that is technically for them to create and decide for themselves within their own lives and situations, but like. like i said in the last letter, there’s a difference between a death you can grieve upon and accept before it actually happens and a sudden one. i think i want to give them that space, that warning. i feel like it’s only right.

i think i want to give it time though. at least until after the album drops, just because news like that needs some sort of buffer. since it probably will be my last album, i don’t know. it seems fitting to allow them to listen to it before they find out the person who created it will be gone soon enough, especially in terms of reviews and just overall feeling.

this has gotten really long, i’m so sorry. i hope you’re doing well, john.

ten


	7. 7

_ 13 july 2019 _

johnny seo,

it's weird how places are remembered by us.

like i remember the theatre back home by that one theatre where we saw that one really shitty horror movie we were excited to see where i had a panic attack because my parents didn't know i went out so they said they weren't gonna let me go to that concert and by that one birthday party we went to when i was trying to harmonize while singing happy birthday in that really weird shadowy hallway and one of the workers complimented by voice.

i don't remember my room by the room we had while we were living together or the room i have no but that room we first kissed and the room we spent our first night together. it's so bizarre how associations with things and places can last long after those things have left your life.

some things grow to have new things associated with them; i don't think of you any more when i go to that one bakeshop downtown but i think that's just because i stopped going there too often.

but time also turns weird, in a way. like when places already become unfamiliar to the future, where daydreams you've had day after day become unrecognizable because truly they're no longer there and your brain knows that. having to relearn how to imagine and dream because of a drop-off disappearance is something i never seem to get used to no matter how often they seem to happen.

sorry for that brain dump. one of the songs on the album is kinda about the idea of familiar places with an unfamiliar feeling and i got lost in my head a bit. it's times like this i miss you.

ten


	8. interlude: draft one of album insert

There is something so sickeningly altruistic with letting go.

It was always easier said than done, a whisper sent into the universe that turned into months, years in the mind.

I have felt at home in a body where my personality is an intruder and if I am going to be honest I still don't know where it's hiding or what it even  _ is _ . I am a patchwork quilt of a person, created by my favorite parts of my favorite people, a conglomeration of stolen traits from distant friends. And that's what this album is centered around.

There is no specific genre I had in mind, no greater theme or message behind it besides trying to convey what it is like to have to relearn entire aspects of yourself not because they're lost but because they're distorted and perhaps were never there all along. There are lyrics from versions of myself I don't particularly wish to acknowledge and lyrics inspired by places I no longer visit, and then lyrics built upon reliving and reexperiencing and thinking. I've been thinking a lot.

Life is about building yourself up, creating different people with your name and your face and your address, only to one day let go of them to welcome in the next. It is a conveyor belt, an instrument; the passage of time is not a cog but the framework of the entire machine. Without it we would be nothing at all.

I hope you find whatever message or meaning you're looking for in this album, that you can enjoy the chord placements and the harmonies and the melodies (and the counter-melodies : D) just as much as I did creating them.

One day, I hope we can all learn to let go and say goodbye and  _ mean _ it. I hope we can all find contentment in who we were, and how every single person we were has formed who we are now. I hope we can all find appeasement, one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote this in roughly thirty minutes bc i wanted to write and remembered i havent updated this bad boy in a good 7 or 8 months. my apologies.


	9. 8

_ 17 july 2019 _

_ johnny seo, _

the last message you sent me had proper punctuation and capitalization. i knew you well enough to know it was your way of setting up a separation, of creating a distinction between the johnny i knew and the johnny you then had to become after all of it. it fucking stung.

but while writing these letters i've been realizing in some capacity that perhaps i'm breaking some sort of post-breakup rule to be talking to you as if i know who you are now. i cling to the person i knew because i guess i have an issue with growing up and moving on. i've wondered if you do the same.

to you i'm probably a bad person. you definitely hate me. and i used to beat myself up over the fact that my entire life was fucking ruined because i'm far too proud and fucking selfish to admit that i was a bad boyfriend and most of all a bad friend. we were friends before we were partners and i'm sorry i forgot that.

the concept of badness though is something i've been grappling with. i used to think i was tainted and in some ways i still think i am but. that's just what flaws are. they're blights on otherwise shiny, beautiful personalities. without proper treatment they infest all of it. it's why evility is so uncertain--what makes one person despise you can be why someone else falls in love with you. i just don't know when those traits are truly awful and it's how i presented those traits. if i just put less light on it, if i make it more blurry, uncertain, is it okay then?

i'm sorry i made you into a liability. i realize now that's what i did and i'm sorry i couldn't see it then and sorry i still can't fully admit to all of it because i'm selfish before everything else and i guess i just don't want to take all the blame. that's how this all ended, though, isn't it?

have a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive been having the need to write specific things and this is the best fic to write abt it in. hope i can get the plot more coherent again next chapter.


End file.
